The worst sound that you can hear, as you make a mad dash out of your house in the morning… running late as usual (not, I might add, “fashionably late”…just plain LATE) is the tinkling, metallic noise made as your (rather expensive) handbag disintegrates around you.

You don’t have enough time to transfer your belongings to another bag, so you are left clutching the remnants of your purse, and any pieces of loose hardware that you were able to find on the floor, in your arms as you run out of the door.

The cab/bus/train ride that follows finds you hunched over your former “dream bag” attempting to effect repairs with whatever tools you have at hand (usually a nail file, scissors, or the wooden stirrer that you forgot to take out of your coffee cup).

Sometimes you emerge victorious and are able to face the rest of the day knowing that, despite whatever else may go wrong, you at least have a fully functioning bag. In the majority of cases, however, your attempts at on-the-go DIY will fail and you will be forced to spend the day in a perpetual state of worry lest your broken bag starts strewing your belongings along the sidewalk.

Depressingly, it’s either that or buy an inexpensive bag to dump everything into..a bag which will, of course, last for years regardless of how you treat it, mocking your expensive handbag purchases for years to come.